


Nightmare

by iamtheyellowbox



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 19:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1910514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamtheyellowbox/pseuds/iamtheyellowbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wade has bad nightmares. Peter finds out the hard way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare

Spiderman crouched on the edge of the roof and sighed. The night had been a complete bust. No interesting villains. No damsels in distress. Not even a boring mugger or bully that he could fight off. He'd have done better to just have skipped patrol tonight and studied for tomorrow's test.   
  
Well, hindsight was 20/20 and all that.   
  
Standing up, Spiderman prepared to step off the ledge when an explosion rocked the building enough to knock him over the edge. Falling, Spiderman panicked for a moment before he was able to twist enough to shoot his webbing at a nearby building and get control of the fall. He pulled himself into a swing and started toward the smoke he could see rising a few blocks away.   
  
People on the street below were in chaos and awe in equal measures. The crowd couldn't seem to decide whether to stand in the street and take pictures to post on their social network of choice, or to run, screaming, as if the end of days were neigh.   
  
Spiderman shook his head and moved faster. He would never understand the general masses during a disaster.   
  
Of course, he was the run swinging into said disaster while wearing nothing but a spandex suit, so maybe he was the one with the issues.   
  
Dropping in front of the building that had borne the been the source of the explosion, it was clear that the police and various emergency services hadn't arrived yet. There were people running from the building covered in char and blood, a few with the dazed look of shock. No one seemed to know where to go or what to do, but they had made it out and were obviously well enough to survive for the next two minutes it would take for paramedics to arrive. It was the victims in the building that were Spiderman's concern at the moment.   
  
Swinging back into the air, Spiderman angled his assent to take him through one the windows on the top floor. The building was filled with smoke and heat, and Spiderman wished for a moment that he had some water to soak the his mask with.   
  
"HELP!"  
  
Shaking off the thought, Spiderman raced toward the scream, stopping to check for a pulse on the few bodies he found along the way. None of them were breathing and Spiderman felt a wave of regret that he had just been wishing for something to fight. This was the epitome of 'be careful what you wish for,' and now these people were dead. It may not be because of him, but he couldn't suppress the guilt that ran through him anyway.   
  
The scream came again and Spiderman was able to identify the location this time as coming from under a desk in the corner of a room that was clearly an office. The chair in front of the desk, along with most of the other items in the office, were on fire.   
  
"Hey, don't worry, here to save the day," Spiderman yelled out to whoever was hiding there. He shot a web at the chair and pulled it out of the way before crouching down in front of the desk and reaching a hand out to help the woman who was hiding. When he was able to pull her clear from the shadows, he could see the side of her face was red and blistering from where her hair had caught fire at some point. The hair was burnt away, leaving only the painful skin at her temple and ear. "What's your name?"  
  
"Lilah," she stood and straightened her skirt, then reached up on instinct to fix her hair before flinching and letting her hands drop, "No need to ask who you are. The costume is pretty self-explanatory."  
  
Spiderman smiled under the mask, "Then let's bypass the small talk and get you out of here, huh?"   
  
"I already tried the long way. The stairs were knocked out by the explosion and the elevator is out of commission."  
  
"Good thing I prefer windows, then," Spiderman shot a web between the wall beside the window and the wall in front of the desk, then grabbed the monitor off the desk and placed it in the center of the webbing, pulling back and letting go to slingshot it through the window. "After you, my lady."  
  
"Show off," she shook her head and stepped forward, looking down at the ground where police and fire trucks were finally arriving on the scene. "Hold on."   
  
Lilah turned and grabbed a brief case from the floor, smacking it against the ground to put out the flames that had been smoldering at the corners. Then she began riffling through the filing cabinet in the corner of the room, pulling out files and sticking them in a brief case.   
  
"Are you serious right now?" Spiderman put his hands on his hips and shook his head as Lilah almost doubled over coughing from the smoke before going right back to grabbing files. "I'm not risking my life so you can save your _work!_ Let's get you out of here!"  
  
"I don't save my _work,"_ Lilah coughed again, "and my life is forfeit anyway."   
  
Spiderman froze. That didn't sound like a 'if I lose my work then I'll go broke and life will suck' kind of statement. That was more of a 'if I lose this work, then someone is going to kill me dead' kind of statement.   
  
"What, exactly, do you do here?" Spiderman walked over and looked down at the files, only catching a few names before Lilah slammed the drawer shut.   
  
"Nothing that a skinny little superhero like you wants to know about," Lilah's voice was raspy now, like she was doing everything she could not to cough. "Your job is saving people. Mine is none of your business. Now I'm done, are you going to get me out of here, or what?"  
  
"Oh, no," Spiderman shook his head, "Not with that," he pointed to the briefcase, "Not when you won't tell me what's in it."  
  
Lilah sat, "Then I die."  
  
"Are you kidding me?" Seriously, what was wrong with this woman? "Look, I'm really sorry about this, but this building could still have people in it who need help so I don't have time to debate this."  
  
Lilah opened her mouth to respond just as Spiderman shot a web at the briefcase and pulled it too him. She rushed to her feet and reached for it, but he spun out of her way and opened the case, pulling out a handful of files and flipping through them as he avoided Lilah.   
  
"These are…" Spiderman looked up at the woman, who was now bent double and coughing, wincing between coughs as the effort probably pulled at the wounded skin on the side of her head and face. Spiderman felt a moment of guilt that, instead of rescuing her immediately, he was going through her things and interrogating her. The woman was acting cool enough that it was easy to forget she was injured. He glanced at the files again and decided he could take just another moment before getting her out of there. "What kind of company is this?"  
  
"Like I said, you don't want to know."  
  
Spiderman growled under his breath, "Alright, let's try another approach: Wolverine or Deadpool?"  
  
Lilah smirked, "Guess you aren't as stupid as you look."  
  
"It's not hard to figure out. I know the names on these files. Silver Fox, Shiva, Native, Copycat. These are all test subjects from the Weapon X program."   
  
"And knowing that," Lilah stood up straight and straightened her clothes again, "Does that effect whether or not you are going to save me? I may be on the _naughty_ list, but I'm still human and there's no way the fire department will get up here before smoke inhalation kills me."  
  
She was right. The only reason he'd stopped to take this long with her is because he knew the fire department was here and would be working their way through the rest of the building getting victims out. But if the stairs really were destroyed to this floor, there was no way they'd make it here in time.   
  
Could Lilah and whoever else worked here really even be considered victims if they were in league with the monsters who ran Weapon X?   
  
"I don't leave people to die," Spiderman spit out, "but I wouldn't exactly consider yourself _saved_ , either."  
  
Spiderman shot a web around Lilah, binding her hands and feet before picking her and the briefcase up and swinging from the building. He set her down in front of a paramedic and called a police officer over, "The people in this building are in cohorts with an organization that performs illegal experiments on humans and mutants. I'm calling SHEILD. Make sure none of them are released until SHEILD agents get here."  
  
It took another three hours of Spiderman teaming first with the fire department to pull people from the building, then with SHEILD to gather whatever evidence they could from the wreckage once the flames were put out. SHEILD had taken custody of everyone once they'd arrived and they'd shipped them back to their base in vans. Spiderman had handed over Lilah's briefcase and seen her off, personally.   
  
The death count from the explosion was high and the list of injured employees was even higher. SHEILD had stated that Wolverine couldn't have been involved, as the last sighting of the man placed him in Bora Bora two days ago. They currently did not have a location for Deadpool, which made him their primary suspect in the investigation of this bombing.   
  
Given the evidence they'd discovered, Spiderman doubted that SHEILD would be pursuing the mercenary for this particular crime.   
  
Spiderman, himself, however couldn't let it go. Two fireman had been injured while putting out the flames, which easily could have spread to other buildings and injured more innocent people. That wasn't something that the younger man could just overlook. Especially when he knew exactly where Wade Wilson crashed when he was in New York.   
  
Spiderman landed on the roof of Deadpool's building just as the sun began to peak over the building. His test was in under four hours and at this rate, it looked like he'd be facing it on zero sleep. Yay.  
  
He let himself in the window that led to Deadpool's living room. Deadpool had come and gone from New York enough that he and Spiderman had developed something of a tentative friendship over the years. Wade was a pain in his ass, sure, but he was also helpful on occasion and always managed to make Spiderman laugh no matter the situation. Spiderman had even spent more than one night crashed out on Wade's couch after a team up that had led to beers and tv at Wade's place.   
  
"Wade," he called out as he shut the window behind him. There was a muffled yell from the direction of Wade's bedroom that had Spiderman running for it.   
  
He burst through the door, expecting Wade to be in a battle, or tied to a chair, or at least in pieces across the floor. Instead, he had a moment to notice that Wade was asleep in bed and shouting in terror before the mercenary woke up and charged him, still clearly in the fog caused by his nightmare.   
  
Deadpool tackled Spiderman to the floor, knocking the wind out of him, and began laying punches before Spiderman got enough air back to yell. Spiderman felt his cheek split open with the force of the other man's hit and he flipped them both in an attempt to pin Wade to the floor. Deadpool resisted, bringing his knee up and into Spiderman's crotch before flipping them again and pulling a knife from under the bed.   
  
"WADE!" Spiderman did his best to shout around the pain in his face and groin.   
  
Deadpool paused, the knife held in the air above his head. His face, under the mask, was blank for a moment before something eased and the knife was lowered slowly, "Spidey?"  
  
"Y-yes," Spiderman wheezed.   
  
"What are you doing here?" Wade's voice held a childlike level of confusion that Spiderman had never heard before.   
  
"I was dropping by to tell you off for blowing up a building," Spiderman grumbled, "but now I feel like it's not really the time."  
  
Wade was still for a moment as he apparently tried to make sense of Spiderman's words, "Blowing up…Oh! Oh. Um…" He rolled off the younger man. "Guess you caught me at a bad time."  
  
"I noticed."    
  
Spiderman sat up and touched his cheek gently. His mask was squishy in a way that said his face was bleeding under it.   
  
The two sat in an awkward silence for a moment, before both spoke at once:   
  
"You wanna tell me what -"  
  
"I should get you ice for-"  
  
Wade laughed uncomfortably. "Ice. Hold that thought." He stood and helped Spiderman to his feet, then led the way to the kitchen. Wade pulled both ice trays from the freezer and sighed when they both came out empty. "Hm, no ice then."  
  
"Don't worry about it," Spiderman started, but Wade was already pulling a beer from the fridge and handing it over.   
  
"Put this on the cheek."  
  
"Thanks," Spiderman limped to the couch and tilted his head back against the cushion, gently pressing the beer against his swollen cheek. "Wanna tell me what all that was about?"  
  
Wade shuffled awkwardly where he stood, "Nightmares."  
  
"You get nightmares?" Spiderman lifted his head up to look at the older man. He wouldn't have suspected that Wade, of all people, suffered from nightmares. The man always acted as if he didn't have a care in the world.  
  
"Not always!" Wade defended, "But, sometimes, something reminds me of…"  
  
"Weapon X." Spiderman finished for him after Wade trailed off.   
  
Wade nodded and took a seat beside Spiderman. Neither could seem to find anything to say after that, and Wade reached forward and turned on the stereo, letting the sounds of Alanis Morrisette fill the silence.   
  
Spiderman refrained from commenting on the music choice and instead whispered, "SHEILD arrested them all and we salvaged what evidence we could from the building so we'll be able to keep them locked up for a while."  
  
"I should have just killed them all." Deadpool shook his head and then pulled his feet up to rest on the couch so he could hug his knees to his chest. He looked smaller than he had any right to, and Spiderman felt his heart constrict at the pain he could hear in the other man's voice.   
  
"No, you shouldn't have. You shouldn't have planted the bomb, either," Spiderman forced himself to chastise, but he kept his tone light so the scolding was only in the words, "You should have called SHIELD yourself so that we could arrest them all. The bomb only made gathering evidence more difficult, and innocent people were hurt tonight."  
  
"Don't care," Wade whined, "They…Spidey, I can't…I can't explain what they've done to me. Not just to me, either! They keep…They never stop! They hurt and they hurt and…they put boxes in my head and they broke my mind and I volunteered! I volunteered because I didn't want to die, but I didn't read the fine print and now all the pretty colors are gone and everything is red and…"  
  
"Hey, breath!" Spiderman reached over and put his hand on Wade's shoulder, "Calm down, you are going to make yourself pass out."   
  
Wade was hyperventilating, hugging his knees in a death grip so tight that he looked like he was going to burst apart at any moment and he wasn't calming down. He continued talking, not making sense any more and Spiderman slid over and wrapped the other man in his arms.   
  
"Hey, talk to me. I'm right here. We had a deal, remember. No boxes allowed to join in our conversations. When I'm here, you have to talk to _me._ Don't ignore me. Come on."   
  
Wade's breathing started evening out and he slowly released his knees and let his legs slide the side as he curled into Spiderman's arms.   
  
"I want them dead, Spidey," Wade whispered into the younger man's neck.   
  
At that moment, with the mercenary curled in his arms like a child, Spiderman couldn't help but agree. "They can't touch you any more. You're safe."  
  
"I'm invincible. That's not the same as _safe._ "  
  
The words broke Spiderman's heart, and he tilted Wade's chin up so they were face to face, "You are _SAFE._ I won't let any one of them near you again, you understand?"  
  
"Don't make promises you can't keep," Wade's smile, under the mask, was sad. "But, thanks. For caring."  
  
Spiderman rested his forehead against Wade's, "Of course I care. You're my best friend, Wade. You don't have to face things like this alone any more."  
  
"Just your best friend?" Wade's voice took on a teasing edge and Spiderman sighed with relief. If Wade was back to flirting, that meant the emotional storm was passing.   
  
"I keep telling you, I'm a catch. It takes more than heated up leftovers and video games to win me over."   
  
"You _are_ a catch," Wade whispered. "You're kind and funny and a real hero. You deserve…the world. In a non-Aladdin sort of way."  
  
Spiderman blinked. This whole night was throwing him for a loop. Wade felt too real, too exposed right now, and it had Spiderman's heart pounding and solidified something that he'd been feeling for a long time. "Wade…"  
  
He reached up and pulled Wade's mask off, followed by his own. It wasn't the first time they had seen each other's faces, but it was the first time Peter had initiated the move.   
  
Wade reached up and touched Peter's bloody cheek, "I hurt you."   
  
"You were having a nightmare," Peter smiled, "You weren't seeing me. It doesn't count."  
  
"It _does,_ " Wade insisted. "I should never hurt you, I..."   
  
"You never would," Peter interrupted, "not if you had known who you were fighting. I know that. Wade, I…"  
  
"Even if I don't know who I'm fighting. I _should_ know. I should always know it's you. There's no excuse…"  
  
"Wade…"  
  
"You're my friend and I know your voice and your face, even with the mask. And I stare enough that I know your body by heart, though you probably don't appreciate that and I probably shouldn't have mentioned it. Still, I should always…"  
  
"WADE!"  
  
"What?" Wade turned back to Peter from where he had been staring off into space.   
  
"I'm trying to tell you that I'm in love with you," Peter grumbled, "and you are killing the moment with babble and misplaced guilt."  
  
"…What?" Wade was frozen, staring at Peter.   
  
"I love you," Peter bit his lip. He knew Wade was attracted to him. Wade always flirted and groped. And he was pretty sure Wade felt more than just attraction, because the other man always sought Peter out and brought him back presents from his missions and did a million tiny things for Peter that only someone in love would do.   
  
"Say that again," Wade's face was beginning to pull into a smile.   
  
"I love you," Peter said more firmly, "you complete dork."  
  
"How romantic!" Wade's whole face was lit up though.   
  
"I'm the king of romance," Peter agreed.   
  
"Definitely. I should buy you a crown. Made of dildos."  
  
"Dildos?" Peter coughed.   
  
"Well, it'd be fitting, considering you are a dickhead," Wade smiled and snuggled closer.   
  
"Oh, just for that, I'm no longer planning to kiss you." Peter turned his face away and Wade leaned forward and placed a kiss just below Peter's damaged cheek.  
  
"I don't think I deserve a kiss until this heals, anyway," Wade frowned again at the injury, "Maybe not even after."  
  
Peter turned back and took the older man's face in his hands, "It's my body. You deserve whatever part of it I want to give you." With that, Peter leaned forward and pressed their lips together.   
  
The kiss was heartbreakingly gentle in a way that Peter never would have imagined a kiss with Wade would be. The other man had his arms wrapped lightly around Peter and was touching him so softly that Peter felt like he was the most precious thing Wade had ever come across. It left Peter breathless, despite the chasteness of the kiss itself.   
  
"I love you too," Wade said as he pulled away, once again resting their foreheads together. "Will you…"  
  
"Will I, what?" Peter put all the encouragement he could into his smile.   
  
"Will you stay, tonight? I don't think I'll have another nightmare if I know you are here." Wade looked terrified as he asked, "I understand if you don't want to. I can't promise that I won't have a nightmare after today and I don't want to hurt you in my sleep or anything and…this was a bad idea. Don't stay."  
  
Peter rubbed Wade's arm soothingly. "I'll stay. I startled you this time. Even if you have another nightmare, I don't think you'll attack again. This time, you'll know I'm there."  
  
"But what if…" Wade started.   
  
"No," Peter pressed a finger against Wade's lips. "I'm not going to stay away on a 'what if.'"  He stood and pulled Wade to his feet. "Now, let's get some sleep. I have a test today and need to rest up first." Peter led the way back to the bedroom and crawled into bed.   
  
The nightmares didn't magically disappear with Peter's presence in his bed. But that night, at least, Wade had dreamed of happy things.    
  
The End.

**Author's Note:**

> In celebration of achieving 100 followers on Tumblr today (http://iamtheyellowbox.tumblr.com), I accepted a short number of prompts for one shots as a thank you for all those psychotic enough to follow me. This was the first prompt. 
> 
> P.S. Lilah, in this story, is based off Lilah from the Joss Whedon show Angel. She is my favorite female villain in the show because she's the perfect combination of damsel in distress and BAMF.


End file.
